In Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the magnificently creepy villain called Mal’akh is tattooed on almost every inch of his body, except for a spot on the crown of his head. But these are not just any old tattoos. Mal’akh’s tattoos incorporate all kinds of esoteric and mystical symbolism — some of it Masonic in nature. Mal’akh may be a torturer, he may be a criminal sociopath, he may be the human equivalent of a demon — but he aspires to all sorts of spiritual knowledge, and he reflects his spiritual aspirations in his tattoos.

Two of Mal’akh’s tattoos are on his legs. As described in Chapter 2 of The Lost Symbol (page 11 of the English edition):

… his muscular legs were tattooed as carved pillars — his left leg spiraled and his right leg vertically striated, Boaz and Jachin.

So, what is this about?

For almost three hundred years, it has been public knowledge that two important symbols in Freemasonry are the pillars Boaz and Jachin. Anciently, pillars with these names were part of the Temple built by King Solomon. In the Bible, the construction of the Temple is described in a couple of places, one of which is the First Book of Kings. The 7th chapter, verses 15 through 22, describe the pillars, at the conclusion of which we read:

And he [Hiram, the master builder] set up the pillars in the porch of the temple: and he set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin: and he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz. (1 Kings 7:21)

The name Jachin translates to “God will establish”; Boaz translates to “in strength.” Thus, one meaning of the pillars is that they signify that God established the Temple in strength.

There are ancient legends associated with the pillars, some of which have shown up in Masonic symbolism. One legend is that the pillars were topped with globes, one showing the globe of the Earth (“the terrestrial globe”) and the other the globe of the heavens as seen from the Earth (“the celestial globe”). You can see these globes atop the pillars in the illustration above (from a 1920′s edition of Albert Mackey’s History of Freemasonry). Another legend is that there was secret wisdom written on records deposited within the pillars. Yet another legend (shown in Dan Brown’s novel) is that one pillar was decorated with carvings horizontally, the other vertically.

What is the significance of the pillars in Masonic symbolism, and why are they of interest to Mal’akh? There is much that could be said about this, only a portion of which I can mention here.

The pillars Boaz and Jachin signify the entrance to the Temple built by Solomon and dedicated to God. Some representation of these pillars is found in most Masonic lodge rooms. Their presence helps to mark the Masonic lodge room as a sort of sacred space, where people take a different perspective on their lives than the everyday point of view. The “journey” of initiation into Freemasonry begins as the initiate symbolically enters the Temple built by Solomon.

The names of the pillars are a reminder to the Mason that, as the outward Temple was established in strength by God, so too the Mason invites God to establish his own life in strength. (Of course, if the Mason invites God to establish his life, he’d better be living the kind of life that God can support.)

As the globes atop the ancient pillars were representations of the heavens and the earth, so too the Mason seeks for knowledge of the natural universe, near and far.

As the ancient pillars were said to be repositories of wisdom, so too the Mason is on a journey in search of wisdom.

These are the values that Mal’akh was dedicating himself to: the search for wisdom. The tragedy of Mal’akh, in part, is that he did not understand that the search for higher wisdom requires kindness and respect for other human beings, in order to be a fully successful search.

I shall have a great deal more to say about Masonic symbolism as it appears in Dan Brown’s novel in my forthcoming book, Discovering The Lost Symbol: The Mind of Dan Brown, the Truth About the Freemasons, and the Idea That We Can Become Gods. (Agents’ and publishers’ inquiries are welcome.)

I picked up my copy of The Lost Symbol at 12:01 a.m. at the Lincoln Center Barnes and Noble in Manhattan, here in New York City. Now, at a little after 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, I’ve dealt with a few other matters, and I am looking at something that many of us have been wondering about for months: the back cover, which does indeed have puzzles! This blog entry is the solution to one of them. (If you don’t want to know, don’t read on!)

[Incidentally, for those of you interested in the technical vocabulary and concepts of cryptography, the type of puzzle that we will be working with is a transposition cipher. This means that the letters of the message are all there in plain sight--but they are in a mixed-up order. How can one put them in the correct order? That is the challenge. I think you are seeing cryptographic history made here in The Lost Symbol; I think that forever afterward, this will be called a "magic square" or "Durer" cipher. Read on to see why.]

The lower left-hand corner of the back cover has a 4 x 4 grid of letters, like so:

Y U O E
M S T D
I I N H
R E K Y

This relates to a similar puzzle in The Lost Symbol that Robert Langdon struggles with. At one point, Langdon realizes that the solution to the puzzle is the magic square in the artwork, Melencolia I, produced during the German Renaissance by Albrecht Durer. (Durer was the subject of Clue #9; a reproduction of Melencolia I, magic square and all, is above.) Durer’s magic square is a matrix of numbers:

16 3 2 13
5 10 11 8
9 6 7 12
4 15 14 1

The trick is to put the letters of the first matrix in the order indicated by the numbers of Durer’s magic square. The lower right-hand corner of Durer’s magic square is 1; this corresponds to the letter “Y” in the letter matrix, so “Y” should go in the first position (where there is already a “Y,” no doubt just to confuse us all). But you get the idea. Sort the letters so that they fit into the following matrix of numbers:

1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16

and when you do this, you get the following matrix of letters:

Y O U R
M I N D
I S T H
E K E Y

which leads to the phrase:

“YOUR MIND IS THE KEY.”

What a powerful statement! But what might it mean, in the context of this book? I think it means two things.

Certainly all the many challenges that Robert Langdon has to face in his adventures have to be solved through the use of his mind. In this world, where the forces of irrationality and superstition fight for supremacy, where irrational arguments are used to mold global politics, it is important to remember that our minds are the key.

Secondly, the conclusion of the novel, Chapters 133 and the Epilogue (which I will not spoil here), have some interesting things to say regarding the potential of the human mind.

Finally, the phrase “YOUR MIND” is almost certainly the key in a Caesar shift cipher (a transposition cipher) using the Freemason’s cipher (a substitution cipher) that is another puzzle on the back cover. But that is another blogpost.

You can read more about Caesar shift ciphers, transposition ciphers, the Freemasons cipher, and substitution ciphers, in one of my forthcoming books. Australian puzzlemaster Denise Sutherland and I are publishing Cracking Codes and Cryptograms for Dummies in October or November (Wiley Publishing). I’ll say more about it in this blog later on, but if you enjoy cryptography, codes, and puzzles, you’ll like this book.

Now on to that other puzzle on the back cover . . . .

[I dedicate the solution of this puzzle to my wonderful wife, Kathleen Koltko-Rivera, who encouraged me to go out to pick up The Lost Symbol tonight, and accompanied me on a lovely nocturnal walk to do so. I love you, sweetheart. L., M.]